Page 101 of Tethered In Blood

She slept more, but notbetter. The sleep that dragged her under was heavy but never brought rest. She woke with the same tension in her shoulders and a guarded look that told me she had spent the entire night fighting off the demons that plagued her past.

Something had broken in her in Vaelwick…

And I didn’t know how to fucking fix it.

“You know, Freckles, I could sit here and watch you work all night.”

My tongue pressed against my canine.

Of course.

Garrick leaned back with his hands behind his head, watching her with that damn smirk. “It’s fascinating, really,” he continued. “The way you furrow your brows as if you’re solving the kingdom’s greatest mystery. Almost makes me believe you’re thinking about me.”

“I’m thinking about how best to poison your drink without anyone noticing.” There was a smirk in her voice, but the way she said it made my hands curl into fists.

“Saints, you truly are cruel,” Garrick sighed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were flirting with me.”

My chest tightened.

“If that’s flirting, I’m out of practice.”

I resisted the urge to turn around.

“I would be more than happy to help you get back into it,” Garrick teased.

She laughed.

An actual laugh. Not the strained amusement I had heard from her for days, the polite scoffs or the forced humor. A genuine, tired laugh that sent an intense and unfamiliar feeling through me.I fucking hated it.

I hated that I wanted to hear more of it, and that it wasn’t me who pulled it from her. My fists tightened again. That wasn’t how I was supposed to think. This shouldn’t have mattered.Shewasn’t supposed to matter.

But she did.

Saints,she did.

I swallowed hard, blinking at the waves, but my mind refused to quiet. It drifted back, unbidden, to the field in Vaelwick—the heat, the smell of humid soil and crushed grass thick in the air. Sweat had clung to our skin as exhaustion settled into our limbs, and she had kneeled beside me. Her fingers glided across the dirt, tracing the sigils carved into the soil.

Her brows had furrowed in concentration, lips parted. Saints, the way she looked at me had sent heat pooling in my gut and licking up my spine.

The usual sharpness in her gaze had softened; her pupils were wide and dark, and her breath had become shallow. Hesitant. She had stammered. A rare crack in the wall she always kept in place.

It was unlike her, the hesitation, the flicker of uncertainty. And in that moment, it had undone me. She had been so close that I could feel the warmth radiating from her skin, see the delicate flush rising on her throat, and hear the unsteady hitch in her breath.

I wanted to close that distance. I nearly leaned in, almost let myself drown in that unbearable pull, losing the fight against the desires of my Fae blood. I was on the verge of discovering how those lips tasted, how she sounded when she didn’t hold back every word. I hadn’t let myself think of it much after that. It had been easier to shove it away, to drown myself in the anger instead. In the pain of her pulling back. How her walls went back up after that night.

With a steadying breath, I forced my hands to relax and stretched my fingers.

“There she is,” Garrick murmured, his voice quieter now.

My muscles loosened. The tension should have faded, but the air shifted. It was subtle, like the tide pulling back before a wave, a second of stillness before impact. The breeze carried the sharp tang of salt, but a cloying and insidious rot lurked beneath it. It was a smell just on the edge of awareness that crept into my senses.

My shoulders turned rigid again.

The water lapped rhythmically against the pier as it had all evening. But now, the sound felt hollow. The trinkets hanging over the doorways clinked in the wind, their chimes fragile, whispered warnings carried on the breeze.

“You feel that?” Quinn’s voice was quiet, but there was a weight behind it.

Garrick’s crate creaked as he stood up straight. “Aye.”

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